


History Obliterates

by clockheartedcrocodile



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Loss of Limbs, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:15:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26517289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockheartedcrocodile/pseuds/clockheartedcrocodile
Summary: “You look well in the firelight,” said Ross, his voice pleasant and hoarse from sleepiness. Crozier saw his shadow first, then Ross himself as he came around the sofa and sat beside him. His dressing gown hung loose about him. He was thin these days, thinner than Crozier liked to see him, but he still smiled.“Your eyes are beginning to go,” said Crozier. He tossed the end of his fur blanket across Ross’ knees, the better to share the warmth. “Ann will have you in spectacles if she hears you talking like that.”
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Lady Ann Ross/Sir James Clark Ross, Captain Francis Crozier/Sir James Clark Ross, Lady Ann Ross/Sir James Clark Ross
Comments: 11
Kudos: 42
Collections: The Two Captains Fest 2020





	History Obliterates

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mothicalcreatures](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mothicalcreatures/gifts).



> Written for the Rossier fic exchange! I don't have the prompt on me right now but it's the one about Crozier getting used to the loss of his hand. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> PS: LOVE your fics

_". . . because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more . . . For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.”_

_\- Herman Melville_

_“Moby Dick”_

They lived in an old house north of London where the walls creaked at all hours. The weathered timbers protested the winter chill outside, and the wind whistled in the eaves, rattling the windows and frightening the kittens where they lay in their bassinet. No matter. Let the house settle and groan. Crozier did not mind it, so long as he could do the same before the sitting room fireplace.

Buckinghamshire was a quiet part of the country, but not tonight. Crozier had settled himself without drawing the sitting room curtains, and, lacking any desire to stand up again, he continued to keep one eye on the window even as he warmed his hands at the fire. The glass was distorted with frost and the sky was threatening snow. It was bitter weather out there. Crozier could feel the cold biting into his joints, worrying his bones like a hungry dog.

The flames licked the air with their tongues, throwing firelight upon the wall like a carnival shadow-show. The light caught the windowpane, the glass, the polished rail of the stair. It caught the metal of Crozier’s hand, made it glow like something still hot from the forge, and Crozier’s gaze kept catching on the gleam. His hands lay at rest on the fur blanket across his knees. One tanned and scarred, the other a mechanical marvel from London. Lady Jane had insisted upon it.

It was an excellent piece- metal and leather, articulated with minute gears and fine, flexible metal wires- but it was as delicate as a dipping needle, and Crozier could make no real use of it. Modern technology might send a man to the pole but it had yet to restore him the full use of a missing limb. Crozier preferred to wear his sleeve buttoned over the stump.

“You look well in the firelight,” said Ross, his voice pleasant and hoarse from sleepiness. Crozier saw his shadow first, then Ross himself as he came around the sofa and sat beside him. His dressing gown hung loose about him. He was thin these days, thinner than Crozier liked to see him, but he still smiled.

“Your eyes are beginning to go,” said Crozier. He tossed the end of his fur blanket across Ross’ knees, the better to share the warmth. “Ann will have you in spectacles if she hears you talking like that.”

“My eyes are as sharp as they ever were. My back, though . . .” said Ross. He put one hand in the small of his back and stretched, groaning low. Crozier instinctively touched Ross’ arm to steady him as he relaxed. “The children didn’t trouble you, I hope?”

Crozier thought of young Anne looking up at him through auburn ringlets, and her sticky little hand tugging on his sleeve. _Mummy said you sailed right off the edge of the world so she had to send Daddy to go and fetch you. Is that true?_

He smiled to himself. “No, they were no trouble. Little Thomas even held up one of the kittens to me and bade me wish it good night.”

“And did you?”

“The poor thing was wriggling out of his hands. I tried to stroke its head and damn near took it off.”

Ross laughed, covering his mouth with the back of his wrist. His gaze fell to Crozier’s automated hand. “You have yet to grow accustomed to it, then?”

“I can’t say I care for it,” Crozier grimaced, turning the thing this way and that. “It creaks in bad weather, even worse than my joints. And it’s cold. I much prefer the buttons.”

“You have Ann to thank for that. She performed the alterations on your coats herself, every one of them.”

“All the more reason to wear them buttoned.”

He felt the warmth of Ross’ hand upon his knee, and the creak of the sofa as he leaned his shoulder against him. Ross’ breathing was slow and even. Crozier knew the sound from when they slung their hammocks side by side.

Carefully, he slung his arm around Ross’ shoulders, and when he was not shrugged off, he pressed a kiss to the place where Ross’ graying hair began to curl over his ear. “If you knew how I longed to sit by your fire again,” Crozier murmured against his temple.

“I longed to see you there,” said Ross quietly.

“I dreamed of this place,” Crozier looked around the room; the shadows leaping up the walls, the dark windows with ice frosting the glass. “I tried to imagine what it would be like. I’m glad you left Blackheath,” he added, to Ross’ amused smile. Crozier had hated Blackheath, and had spared no feelings in telling Ann so.

Ross’ smile didn’t waver, but Crozier caught a glimpse of something grim and worrisome in his eyes. His hand squeezed Crozier’s knee. “The winters are fuel here, though not as cruel as some. The heat comes at great expense.”

“But . . ?”

“But I find I can’t bear London society. Especially now. The country is better.”

“I suppose you would be warmer in Blackheath,” said Crozier. He laid his hand carefully atop Ross’, and Ross did not flinch at the touch of metal.

Ross shook his head. “It’s no good looking for a house that will keep me warm. I do not believe such a place exists.”

There was some truth to that. Even here, sitting by the fire with thick furs in his lap and his dearest friend close at hand, Crozier found himself shivering. He was acutely aware of the cruel weather outside, and the winter wind encroaching on the moor. He had been colder, but that was of no consequence. Ice was ice. Fire was fire.

“Besides,” said Ross. “I would have you live with us. Ann and I, and the children. Buckinghamshire could not be better suited to large families.”

“I’m on a guest in this house, James,” Crozier reminded him.

“You’re hardly a guest,” said Ross. No sooner had he said it when Crozier heard the creak of a slippered foot upon the stair, and Ross, visibly brightening, turned in his seat to look over the back of the sofa. “Ann, my duck. Come sit with us.”

“The children are abed, as you should be,” said Ann, her voice sleep-roughened and lovely. Crozier looked up over his shoulder and saw her standing on the stair, leaning one slender arm upon the railing in a cavalier manner. Her hair hung loose about her neck, tousled from sleep and Ross’ kisses, and the sight of her made Crozier’s mouth go dry.

“Oh, I can’t bear to get up,” he grunted at last. “Let an old man lie.”

“Tea, then. If you insist on staying up.”

She descended the stair with her gown dragging behind her, skating silently down the burnished wooden steps. From there she vanished into the darkened interior of the house; a specter, a wisp of smoke. The memory of her remained in the scent of rose oil, mixing with the ashy smell of the fire. Crozier closed his eyes and the house settled around him, creaking and groaning like a breathing thing. It seemed to come alive when Ann went by, like the beating chambers of a heart.

Ross said nothing, and neither did Crozier. They sat warming themselves with the fire and each other’s bodies, half-entwined, waiting for Ann to return to the room. The parlor smelled of Ann, and ash, and some dark, musky smell that Crozier had long associated with the orlop. If Ross had told him this house had been build from shipyard timbers, Crozier would have believed him.

He had almost fallen asleep when the smell of hot tea roused him. Ann came around the sofa with the front of her gown half-laced and a tray of tea in her hands. One for her, and one for Crozier, and one for Ross with a nip of something bitter and fire-hot in it. Crozier sipped his tea and watched the movement of Ross’ throat as he drank. He didn’t grimace. His eyes were closed, as though savoring the burn. Crozier did not begrudge him that. Ross had been a lush far longer than Crozier had been sober.

“Thank you for the tea, Ann,” Crozier said as Ann sat down. At once her husband’s arm encircled her, and she leaned her head upon his shoulder. She gazed at Crozier with a look of great affection.

“I’m glad to see you enjoying each other’s company again,” said Ann. She reached out to touch her fingertips to Crozier’s metal wrist. “The same spirit animate you both, you know. My little fox and you. I know you don’t think it, but you’ve brought a great deal of happiness to our house ever since you decided to stay here.”

Crozier glanced at Ross. “Little fox?”

“He’s blushing,” Ann said with a smile. She lifted her head and nipped fondly at Ross’ ear.

Ross’ face grew pinker. “She calls me her little fox from time to time.”

“For the color of your hair?”

“Not at all,” said Ross, looking oddly shy. “Er, rather for my skill with a dipping needle.”

“When we were first getting acquainted, and still meeting in secret,” said Ann to Crozier, leaning across her husband with feigned carelessness, “he brought his instruments to my home and taught me how to measure terrestrial magnetism.”

“My god,” said Crozier, feeling his spirits lift. There had been a time when nothing was so calculated to bore him as a well-worn story heard many times before. It had not been so for a very long time. Now such stories were an inexpressible comfort. With well-worn stories came well-worn endings.

“Look, he is blushing again,” said Ann with undisguised delight. She curled her hand up into Ross’ hair and turned him to face her, kissing his cheeks and the lids of his eyes. Ross made a small, soft noise in the back of his throat, and pulled her closer, until she was very nearly sprawled across him.

“I am all too familiar with your and your magnetism. I’ve seen you dance,” Crozier grunted, feigning annoyance. They were like newlyweds, yet their love had the inexorable steadiness of celestial bodies.

Not long ago, when he gone away to die in the cold places of the world, he had dreamed of watching them dance. In the long nights he had clung to old memories, revisited again and again, each of them given the same treatment of dreampolish that time gives happy bygone days. Always he had seen them, dancing; he with his white-gloved hand upon her back, she with her bare hands tangled in his hair.

In these dreams, Crozier stood by the wall, drink in hand. He had rarely attended parties and done otherwise. He watched them dance, and perhaps Ann was not so fine a dancer as the other ladies, and perhaps Ross was no great talent himself, but to Crozier’s eye, theirs was the _musica universalis_ \- the movement of the spheres. Love, in form and movement.

“I would like to see you dance again,” said Crozier, his mind a world away.

Ross looked at him, a slight crease in his brow. “Please,” said Ann, resting her chin upon Ross’ shoulder and looking at Crozier with amused eyes. “James is a clumsy fool when we dance.”

“It’s because I can never stop looking at you,” said Ross.

Ann’s smiled up at him, then looked back at Crozier. Her gaze softened. “Love is not all white gloves and dancing, Frank.”

“She’s right,” Ross nudged him in the elbow. “Sometimes love is attending dreadful plays about one’s husband’s career so he doesn’t have to.”

“Or holding one’s wife when she screams in the night,” said Ann. Her hair, beautifully undone, had tumbled into her face. She tucked a curling strand behind one ear.

At that moment, Crozier found it difficult to meet her eye. He looked back into the fire, studying its swaying tongues of flame, and when Ross lifted Crozier’s hand to his mouth and kissed the cold metal knuckles, Crozier stiffened as though he had touched his skin to ice.

“Sometimes it’s sending one’s husband to bring home his dearest friend,” Ross said quietly. Crozier could feel his gaze upon him, making the skin prickle at the back of his neck. “Even after he has sworn never to sail again.”

“If she had asked you to stay, would you have stayed?”

Crozier wasn’t sure what made him ask. He hadn’t been aware of the question before he asked it. It simply snapped into being like a spark from a stone.

“Yes,” said Ross, without hesitation. He lowered Crozier’s hand. “And it would have broken my heart.”

Crozier couldn’t look at him either. He looked anywhere else- at the fire, at the shadows on the wall, at the old wooden floor that he’d seen Ann dance across countless times. He’d had Ross on that floor, only a few days prior. On a fur before the fireplace, that long-familiar body still thrilling under Crozier’s hand. The sharp hollow of his collarbone, his soft belly, his hair like an aurora.

He heard the sofa settle as Ann rose from her seat, and the creak of her slippered footsteps as she walked around the back of the sofa. Crozier moved to accommodate her as she sat beside him, his eyes on her arms, the movement of her gown. “I loved him too much to keep him here,” she said, her breath warming his cheek. “And I loved you, Frank. I wanted you home.”

Her arms enfolded him, tucking him against her like a bird with her young. She kissed his cheek, his nose, the corner of his mouth- quick, sweet kisses, like a hummingbird kissing nectar from a flower petal. Her hand was on his arm, caressing him up to his neck and jaw, and Crozier shuddered as he felt another hand join her there; a man’s hand, one that cupped his chin and turned him to meet Ross’ kiss. It was a kiss that was familiar, and unhurried. The act of a man who knew he had time.

“Will you take me dancing, Frank?” said Ann in Crozier’s ear. “In London, in the spring?”

Ross lingered for just a moment before pulling away and smiling like he’d stolen a kiss in the junior officers’ mess. Crozier laughed softly against Ross’ mouth, not taking his eyes from him. “I will. I will.”

A tremble of unvoiced laughter passed through Ross’ frame. “Don’t you dare go dancing. You’ll make me envious.”

Crozier smiled at the thought. “Don’t you start. We danced a quadrille together, if you’ll recall.”

His hand- his real, flesh and blood hand- cupped the back of Ross’ head, brought him in close enough to kiss and kiss again. Ann shifted in her seat behind him. Crozier felt her reach across his lap to caress his thigh. “Captain Crozier and Miss Ross,” she said in a husky voice. “Oh, I would have loved to see it.”

Ross’ hand clumsily slipped across Crozier’s lap, found Ann’s slender hand and grasped at it. “Your husband cuts a fine figure as a maiden, Ann,” said Crozier, feeling very warm at the sight of Ross’ flushed face and dilated eyes. “You should have been there.”

“I wish you had,” Ross breathed. Crozier felt him squeeze Ann’s hand. “I wish you had been there for so many things, duck. Our nights in Antarctica would have passed all the sweeter with you aboard.”

Ann’s thumb traced the vein that showed green beneath the skin of Ross’ wrist. Crozier felt an unconscionable desire to hold their fine hands in his own clumsy, sweating ones. To raise them to his lips and kiss Ann’s lily-white fingers, Ross’ shaking palm. “He means every word,” he said, at Ann’s shy and doubtful smile. He reached out and brushed his fingers through the loose curls of her hair. “You have the heart of an explorer, Ann. You live and breathe enough hope for the both of us.”

“How funny,” Ann smiled. “There was a time- long ago, mind, when I was young and had no notion of myself- when I had feared my little fox would grow tired of me.”

“What stuff.”

“I was young! You too were a fool when you were young, Frank, if James is to be believed,” Ann laughed. She had a low, joyous laugh, almost masculine; Ross’ laugh, as seen reflected by the moon. “You must understand, I thought I had nothing to offer an explorer. Not one with all the world laid out before him.”

“In Antarctica he thought of little else but you,” said Crozier earnestly. He lifted their hands in both of his own and kissed them, pressing his clumsy lips to each knuckle. “He wanted nothing more than for you to be with him, sharing the marvels of our voyage.”

“My James,” said Ann. Her smiling eyes reflected the firelight. “My Frank. Bringing all the world to my bed and laying the treasures of the Antarctic at my feet like an empress. No woman was ever loved better.”

Ross sighed softly. He rose from his seat- he grunted as he did so, and again, Crozier offered his hand to steady him- and began to poke idly at the logs in the fireplace. The flames sputtered, flickered wildly as he urged it into a full blaze again. Ann’s hand slipped from Crozier’s shoulder as she rose and walked to the window.

“Look,” she said, standing framed against the darkness. “It’s snowing.”

Crozier hated snow, and nothing could make him love it again, but the look in Ann’s eyes when she saw it falling was almost enough to change his mind. Soon enough Ross joined her, and the two stood clasped together like seashells, gazing out into the snow. After a moment Ann glanced back at Crozier, with a look that brooked no argument, and the two of them parted silently, as though in invitation. Crozier rose, groaning through his teeth, and took his place between them at the window.

Ann leaned her head upon his shoulder and closed his eyes. Crozier closed his eyes too, briefly overwhelmed, before opening them again and looking out at the snow. The firelight, and the candle in the window, spread a small, golden pool of light across the grass. Crozier watched as flakes of snow clung to the withering stems.

“I did not intend to come home,” he said stiffly.

“I know,” said Ross.

“I would have been buried beneath the ice.”

“I know.”

“What would you have done? If Ann hadn’t sent you?”

Silence then, while the snow continued to fall. Ross seemed to think about it a long while, with his arm still linked with Crozier’s. Crozier looked at him sidelong. Ross’ eyes were on the sky.

“I would have burned my papers,” he said at last. “I would have hidden myself from the world, and died a broken man.”

A soft exhale from Ann. “I would not have allowed it."

“No,” said Ross quietly. “You would not.”

The snow fell steadily and silently. It covered the grass, the rustling trees. The hoof prints of the horses and the muddy footfalls of Ross’ children fell to obscurity beneath the snowfall. To Crozier’s eye, the world outside might have been untouched. Undiscovered.

“Fitting, isn’t it. How close this damn world came to losing us,” said Crozier. “Perhaps we should have let history obliterate us.”

“No, gentlemen,” said Ann swiftly, so swiftly that Crozier was taken by surprise. She kissed Crozier’s shoulder. “You are the great explorers of our time, are you not? That must count for something,” She gestured up at the sky, dark with snow-laden clouds, and high above them, Crozier saw a gleaming silver sliver of the moon. “History will not hide you- of that I am certain. Your names will be written in the stars.”

“By god, Ann,” Ross murmured. “You make me feel unbound by all the laws of terrestrial magnetism.”

Snow lay thick on the grass now, dusting it as white as the surface of the moon itself. Clumps of autumn gorse now found themselves steeped in ice. Soon the snow would conceal all that lay beneath it. It would be as though the old house in Buckinghamshire had never existed at all.

In a moment of whimsy, Crozier reached out and touched his fingertips to the window. First his right hand, then his left. Both left streaks in the cold condensation.

It was a fine hand, truly. Much more handsome than his left hand had ever been, and that, perhaps, was the heart of it. What was lost was gone forever. In the ice, in a fireplace. Two ships in the snow. A pack of burning papers. It didn’t matter. Something had been lost, out in the arctic, and the construct that had replaced it was beautiful, and elaborate, and ultimately a falsehood.

But it looked well in the firelight.

“Enough ice,” said Ann. She drew the curtains back into place, and they hung there like columns, so unlike the flapping of canvas tents. “Enough of the snow and sky. I am retiring, and I would bring my husband with me.”

Ross nodded, a sudden jerk of the head. “You’re right,” he murmured, squeezing Crozier’s hand. “You’re right. Will you join us, Frank?”

Crozier’s heart ached with love and gratitude at the thought. He smiled faintly, shook his head. “Not just yet,” he said. “You go. I’d like to sit by the fire. Just a little longer.”

“Of course,” Ross smiled. His eyes shone with their old, familiar brilliance. “Of course.”

Ann embraced him one more time, her arms as strong and gentle as the wings of a bird. Crozier closed his eyes and embraced her in return, burying his face in her soft, sweet-smelling hair.

“Stay as long as you like,” she murmured in Crozier’s ear. “I will send James to fetch you.”


End file.
